
Pixel Artist / Game Dev [Tahko](https://x.com/TAHK0) [on Mario Kart World](https://x.com/TAHK0/status/1933864009607856540)[^1]:

> hot take but the open world in mario kart world is actually super detailed there just isn’t any fancy reward for noticing things

There's a metaphor there!

Games are notorious for incentivizing exploration through secrets, achievements, etc. It's what they do — gamify curiosity. It's beautiful to me that what will likely be the best-selling game on the Nintendo Switch 2 has brought in so much detail and left it to the player to seek it out for the pure delight of finding it.

[Platforms have similarly gamified](/sloanonplatforms) several creative pursuits: Writing, art, music, etc. There are plenty of benefits: more easily connecting with like-minded creatives, being exposed to more inspiring work, reaching a broader audience, etc. It can be fun! One potential tradeoff though, is a misplaced emphasis on how many points a piece gets on these platforms. Which then contorts the practice from creating beauty to algorithm juicing.

I remember as a kid spinning up Time Trial on Mario Kart 64 many times. Though it wasn't to try and beat a personal best. The benefit of this mode was that you had the track all to yourself, and there was no point where you'd be kicked out until you completed three laps. This was so alluring because it gave me time to slow down and explore the scenery, find the secrets, and imagine my own stories in these worlds.

Curiosity, it seems, didn't need an achievement to be worth pursuing. I imagine the same is true for whatever your practice is.

[^1]: While I've played many a Mario Kart, I haven't played this one yet... I've been living vicariously through streamers.


Mario Kart World and Curiosity


[Robin Sloan on platforms and the web](https://www.robinsloan.com/lab/platform-reality/):

> And I suppose I think a standard for art is that it doesn’t just play a game, but invents one. On an internet crowded with creators eager to obey each platform’s demands, follow their Best Practices (which harden into mandatory genres: quick-setting concrete), there is, I believe, an incandescence to stubborn specificity.
>
> ... There’s one platform for which none of this is true, and that’s the web platform, because it offers the grain of a medium — book, movie, album — rather than the seduction of a casino.

Astute and eloquent as always.

Blogs and websites certainly have their own ecology and cookie-cutter shapes you can fit neatly into. And yet, at the same time, [they don't](/melonandwebrevival). It's that fine control, the distance from metrics and algorithm juicing, the conductor with their back turned to the audience — all of this makes the act of web craft much more fulfilling in the end.


Sloan on Platforms


Austin Kleon lately has written a few pieces on how "[you don't need a vision](https://austinkleon.substack.com/p/you-dont-need-a-vision)." He makes the case that visions are for things that already exist in the world, where art is the process of creating what _doesn't_ already exist. In response to "Vision is everything:"

> ...this all sounds very inspiring — it really does pump you up! — but for much of my life, it would have been almost useless advice, because I didn’t really see any of my career coming. There was no clear path back then to where I am now.

It's this way on a project level just as much as it is on a life-sized scale. Many projects don't start with a crystal clear vision of what's going to make it on the page.

Sometimes the wind is in your sails, a vision for the project is so clear that it practically writes itself. Those can be so thrilling!

The only way we get those, in my experience, is with many projects that start in dark caves.

The lights are out and there's little sound. 

Perhaps there's a north star, or a breeze indicating a path to follow. So much of the start can be groping in the dark, feeling the walls and floor gently, finding an indication of the way forward.

Dead ends are reached. Steps retraced. Sometimes early, sometimes late.

Sourced Via Kleon on [No such thing as waste](https://austinkleon.com/2024/04/23/no-such-thing-as-waste/), Lynda Berry writes about this searching when [drawing with four year olds](https://www.instagram.com/p/C5om0Ahx-XI/?img_index=1):

> I often find drawings begun and then abandoned… Something is not quite right and they need to start over. Then comes the issue of wasting paper. And of finishing what they started. But what if we were…talking about a kid learning to play the trumpet, trying to play a certain note by repeating it… Getting the hang of it, making it natural. Would we say they are easing notes? It took 12 index cards to come to this image.

Projects start here, but I'm finding that even seasons follow this pattern. For me, fall and spring are highly generative times of year, while winter and summer I find myself slowing down. It's applied across the board to software, music, art, and writing.

The challenge is to look at that cavern not as a discouraging block. But as a part of the process.

The predominant culture values linearity, but nature works in seasons and cycles. Overlooking that can make the cave feel never-ending.

Derek Sivers writes about how the two ideas are in contrast in "[Explorers Are Bad Leaders](https://sive.rs/exled):"

> Explorers poke through the unknown, experimenting, trying many little dead-ends.
> 
> Explorers meander, constantly changing directions based on hunch, mood, and curiosity.
> 
> Explorers are hard to follow. It’s better to let them wander alone, then hear their tales...
> 
> Leaders are easy to follow. Leaders say, “Here’s where we’re going. Here’s why this will improve your life. Here’s how we’re going to get there. Let’s go.”
> 
> ...Leaders go in a straight line. Leaders simplify.
> 
> Explorers are bad leaders.

Keeping a creative practice is contingent on the extent to which you are comfortable with submerging yourself in the dark time and time again. 

Giving up on the search means being closed off to finding the way forward. Returning to the dark, though, means there's a chance of a new path being discovered. 

That honestly is what ends up being the fun part of the process. It's an act of discovery when a piece starts to come alive, or when a practice continues to mature and grow after years.

It repeats time and time again. Since, [as Gene Wolfe told Neil Gaiman](/gaimanamericangods) "You never learn how to write a novel, you only learn to write the novel you’re on.”

I love what this means for a creative life. As Kleon put it at the start of this piece, In [Free Play](https://www.freeplay.com/Writings/TheArtOfIs.php), Stephen Nachmanovitch speaks to practice as a means of uncovering oneself over time:

> The Western idea of practice is to acquire a skill. It is very much related to our work ethic, which enjoins us to endure struggle or boredom now in return for future rewards. The Eastern idea of practice, on the other hand, is to create the person, or rather to actualize or reveal the complete person who is already there. This is not practice _for_ something, but complete practice, which suffices unto itself. In Zen training they speak of sweeping the floor, or eating, as practice. Walking is practice.

With this piece done, I'll be stepping back into the cavern. Listening for the next indication forward. 

Creative Projects Start in Dark Caverns

Leavitt – Etude


![Wishing for more wishes](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2024-06-22.jpg)

🦊 🌠


Night Sky

Speer - Baroque Dance


A quick start guide:

1. [Install Pytest](https://docs.pytest.org/en/7.1.x/getting-started.html) through pip.
2. When running your tests, call it through the command line:

```
python3.7 -m pytest .
```

There's documentation for calling it globally, but I had no luck. Calling it through the same version of python with the `-m` flag did the trick for me.

3. Write your test file!

```
import pytest

@pytest.fixture(scope='class')
def my_tests_init(request):
	# Set up DB connection here

	try:
		# Insert any sample date
	except Exception as e:
		# Handle exceptions

	yield # Your tests will happen here

	# Tear down: remove sample data from db.
	# Close DB
```

Pytest will use decorators to add in the functionality needed to interpret your file correctly.

All your tests will live in a class like this one:

```
@pytest.mark.usefixtures("my_tests_init")
class TestMyClass:

	def test_my_method(self):
		expected = [{'cool': True}]

		result = self.my_class.my_method()
		assert result == expected

```

Here, the decorator ensures the the init method runs before and after these tests.

From there, test methods must start with "test" in the method name.

And you do your thing from there!

Pytest, unlike testing libraries like unittest or Jest in JS, doesn't use assertion methods. Here we just have the `assert` keyword being used against a boolean expression. Even if we use a reference type, Pytest will know to assert the values of the dictionary or list deeply.

Additionally: If you're not finding what you need from the command line error logs, adding the `v` flag will give you a closer look, while `vv` gives you even more details. `vv` Goes as far to show a git-like comparison, line by line, of what conflicts between your expected and actual results!


Testing with Pytest


![📝](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-06-23.jpg)

Another one down!!

Started off very exercise heavy. These are figure study simplifications of the torso here:

![🫘](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-06-23-2.jpg)

Explored a few animal charicatures:

![🦉](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-06-23-3.jpg)

![🐘](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-06-23-4.jpg)

And then finished the book out with meditative [automatic drawing](/automaticdrawing):

![🧘](https://padilla-media.s3.amazonaws.com/blog/art/sketches-2023-06-23-5.jpg)

My next one is a bigger sketchbook, so I'm excited to have more room to play. :)


Chris Padilla/Blog

On This Day